In the early years of the Cold War, nuclear engineer Manfred Mota developed an
atomic-powered punch and embarked on a brief crime spree as the Atom Smasher, but was
defeated on his first case by the original Flash, Jay Garrick.

While in prison, Mota plotted his revenge, noting the Flash’s disappearance.
When a new Flash appeared, Barry Allen, Mota believed him to be
the same Flash. Upon his release from prison, he became Professor Fallout, holding the city
hostage with a neutron bomb hidden inside a giant sculpture of an atom. The somewhat
confused Flash was able to defeat him, and returned him to prison.

Over the ensuing years, Mota’s sanity deteriorated as he became obsessed with revenge
and with, ironically, safe nuclear power. Stealing material from a nuclear power plant,
he developed a suit powered by nuclear fusion which allowed him to fire extremely destructive
blasts, then feed on the energy produced. Calling himself Fusionn, he attacked the third Flash,
Wally West, succeeding in briefly incapacitating him. The ultimate
humiliation of unmasking his foe backfired, however, when the crowd watching the battle
revealed that not only was this a new Flash, but that his identity had been publicly known
for several years. Infuriated, Mota decided to take out his revenge on the city instead of
his dead enemy, but was stopped when the Flash pierced a hole in his coolant tanks,
producing a feedback loop that melted his suit into the ground and buried Mota in radioactive rock. (Flash 50th Anniversary Special, 1990)

Resurfacing

Long believed dead after his encounter with Wally West, Mota was actually transformed into an energy being. He has to concentrate constantly to maintain his form. This also makes him difficult to kill, as he can reconstitute himself. Seeking a way to restore his humanity, he tracked down his estranged daughter Valerie. Mota’s plan was to use her DNA and Inertia’s future technology to make himself human again...even though it would kill her. When Inertia betrayed him, he realized the mistake he had made, deciding that it was more important to reconcile with his daughter than to restore his physical being.

He still blames the Flashes (and Inertia) for all his problems, and Mota was finally captured by the fourth Flash, Bart Allen. Mota is currently held in a magnetic cell in Iron Heights.
(Flash: TFMA #4–8, 2006–2007)

In the year 2645, a gigantic radioactive creature menaced Central City.
Scientists believed the creature was Mota, somehow alive and transformed into living plutonium.
Tachyon physicist John Fox was sent back
in time to recruit the aid of the three Flashes* who had defeated Mota before. He failed to make contact, but his unstable return trip through
time imbued him with super-speed. Fox combined several costumes from the Flash Museum, took on the name of Flash, and
defeated Mota by launching him, unprotected, into the timestream, to a distant future in
which all his plutonium had decayed into inert lead. (Flash 50th Anniversary Special, 1990)

* Mota was created for the Flash 50th Anniversary Special as a villain who had fought each of the three Flashes, and whose identity and M.O. would change as appropriate for the Golden Age, the Silver Age, and the current era. The framing sequence in the 27th century made no mention of further appearances by Mota, and strongly implied it was his encounter with Wally West that led to him becoming living plutonium 700 years later.

Now that Mota has returned in the present, this might seem to contradict the future we saw. On the other hand, the details are sketchy: he was buried under Central City for several centuries, and they know exactly when he fought three Flashes. 27th century may have simply lost any records of his encounters with the fourth Flash. Or perhaps they knew Mota had been active during Bart Allen’s career, but only had enough resources to contact three Flashes.

As long as Mota is once again buried under Central City, his appearances in Flash: TFMA can be consistent with the 50th Anniversary Special.

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